Stone's illustration for Book 4, "A Turning," Chapter 10, "The
Doll's dressmaker
Discovers A Word," appeared in the October, 1865, instalment.

The scene captured in the thirty-seventh
illustration is established
at the very opening of the chapter: the presence at the bedside of
Mortimer Lightwood and
at the foot of the bed Jenny Wren. What is not clear for some
paragraphs is that Lizzie
is present, but this the illustration makes clear. [See below for commentary and passage illustrated.]

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A darkened and hushed room; the river outside the
windows flowing on to
the vast ocean; a figure on the bed, swathed and bandaged and bound,
lying helpless on
its back, with its two useless arms in splints at its sides.

They provided Jenny with materials for plying her work,
and she had a
little table placed at the foot of his bed. Sitting there, with her
rich shower of hair
falling over the chair-back, they hoped she might attract his notice.
With the same
object, she would sing, just above her breath, when he opened his
eyes, or she saw his
brow knit into that faint expression, so evanescent that it was like a
shape made in
water. But as yet he had not heeded. The 'they' here mentioned were the medical
attendant; Lizzie, who was there in all her intervals of rest; and
Lightwood, who
never left him.

The two days became three, and the three days became
four. At length,
quite unexpectedly, he said something in a whisper.

'What was it, my dear Eugene?'

'Will you, Mortimer —'

'Will I —?

— 'Send for her?'

'My dear fellow, she is here.' [639]

The moment realised in this illustration undoubtedly is the arrival
of a clergyman
(rear centre) to perform a marriage:

As the evening light lengthened the heavy reflections of
the trees in
the river, another figure came with a soft step into the sick room.

'Is he conscious?' asked the little dressmaker, as the
figure took its
station by the pillow. For, Jenny had given place to it immediately,
and could not
see the sufferer's face, in the dark room, from her new and removed
position.

Consequently, Stone has facilitated the chapter's creating suspense
by inserting the
one figure not mentioned in the chapter previous to its conclusion,
the minister who will
marry Lizzie and Eugene. If the reader has studied to illustration
prior to reading the
entire chapter, the figure of the clergyman is an enigma, but, if the
reader waits to
examine the plate until the last page of the October 1865 instalment,
the meaning of
the illustration is clear: the climax of Eugene's deciding whether to
propose Marriage
to the girl from the river and her agreeing to accept him.

Marcus Stone has added the one important element lacking in the
text: Lizzie's
loving look of concern for Eugene, propped up on an enormous pillow and passing
in and out of consciousness. Everything else is almost as Dickens
describes, including
Jenny's work-table, the assortment medicines, and the position of
Lightwood. What the
illustrator has adjusted in order to render the scene more compact is
Jenny's location:
in the text, she is clearly at the foot of the bed, so that Eugene can
make ready
eye-contact with her, but Stone has moved Jenny and her table to
Mortimer's side
in order to reduce the picture's width. The enormous, four-poster bed
and its hangings
dwarf the sufferer, who is rigid and expressionless, while the other
characters —
except the clergyman — have more animated expressions and
postures. Thus, although
the illustration reveals that Lizzie is present and puzzles the reader
with the presence
of the fifth figure, it does not reveal whether Eugene will live or
die, but renders
credible Lizzie's decision to marry above her class the man whom she loves.